Modernization

By Danny

“They didn't believe in radios, it was something that was not allowed in the house because of the religion.”

Danny: My name is Daniel Jacobs, and my recording was me interviewing my zaide, which means “grandpa” in Yiddish. About his life as the grandson of an immigrant, whose grandparents immigrated to America from Europe pre-World War I. And how he adapted to a new life. And a reoccuring theme that kept coming up was modernization.

Zaide: I made a radio. My brother, Eli, brought home joke books. And in one of the books that he brought home, I think it was Mad Magazine or something and in the back pages there was what they called it, a radio that didn't need power and batteries.

I lined the straw with wire, and I took a nail, and I copied it and I got an ear phone piece and I hooked it up to the end of the winding and it received radio signals that was in the air that I hooked up to the radiator with an alligator clip. And… I was able to change channels, and I remember listening to radio, the songs, WABC, AM radio. I managed to do that, and I had that hidden under my pillow. And, when I went to sleep, I would listen to the doo-wop songs through an ear piece.

Danny: So my zaide would then tell me about what would happen if his parents found out about the radio.

Zaide: They didn't believe in radios, it was something that was not allowed in the house because of the religion. Because of the religion we didn't… weren't allowed to be communicative with outside society other than Williamsberg people that we dealt with.

Danny: So one of the stories that my zaide told us, and always tells my family regularly, was when he had rebelled against his parents and ended up going to a movie with his brother, Eli. Which, now looking back we realize is a huge turning point.

Zaide: I remember one Shabbos not going to shul and following my brother, Eli, behind him, where he didn't know I was following him, and he went to the theater, movies. On Shabbos.

Danny: So, during the Shabbos with zaide's parents, there is no electricity, nothing using electronics. He actually wasn't allowed to go to the movies at all. So this was a huge rebellion against his parents.

Zaide: And I ran up before him, before he entered, and I says, can I go on in with you? And he paid for me to go in and to see the movie. That introduced me to the other world; it was the movies that I saw with my brother. Eli. And I felt that I wanted a more modern life.

Danny: And from then on, my zaide would eventually leave the shtetl that was Brooklyn, and embrace being a Jewish American.

Zaide: I remember the group of boys, the American boys, in the neighborhood. They used to be on the stoop, and they used to sing doo-wops. And I really loved the sound of doo-wops. They were all singing. [sings] Doo-Wop-Doo. [Speaking] That's it. And that was in the fifties and sixties.

Danny: Now, because of my zaide, I'm able to live in a modernized world where I can be proud to be both a Jew and an American. Where I can embrace both cultures as my own.

[Doo-wop music plays]